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Thursday, October 1, 2009

Earlier this month I put up a poll asking which of five colors people would like to see swatched. Each of the colors got a vote this time, with Scherer’s Blue Frost getting one vote, OPI’s Time-less Is More, Del Sol’s Heartbreaker, and Nubar’s Forest all getting two votes, but the clear winner was from this little Kleancolor company, who out of the blue I’m starting to see more and more of, called Twinkle Heart.

At first I thought I’d swatch this both alone and over a color (since it is, ultimately, a top coat). But the thought of putting it on, and then having to take it off quickly thereafter – especially after so recently being brought to my knees after removal of one of China Glaze’s new glitters – quailed me.

So for this mani, I decided to put it over another polish. But which one? I wanted to make sure this one would stand out. I opted for an off-white. I’m not entirely sure why, that’s just the color that was calling to me. I decided on OPI’s Pearl’s Night Out, which I recently picked up at Trade Secret for 60% off.

As you can see, it’s a pretty sheer frost – this is one coat – but for the base of a top coat, I was perfectly fine with it like this.

I’d never worked with this kind of top coat before, where there are large specially-shaped glitters hidden throughout the bottle. I’ve read about them on blogs like Nail Juice and Body and Soul, though, usually about OPI’s offerings. Those bloggers would often use tools, like toothpicks, to get the confetti out, though I doubted I’d have the patience to do that.

As such, I decided to let the cards fall where they may, and simply brushed the glitter on.

Well, that was my idea, anyway. It took only two attempts to do my nails in my traditional manner to discover that this was NOT the way to accomplish application of this lacquer.

First off, I quickly learned not to try and remove excess polish from the brush before applying. If there were any hearts, this was a sure-fired way to put them back in the bottle. As such, I put on two to three very thick and somewhat uncomfortable coats. This was all to the good, because ever the small glitter is pretty sparse, as you probably surmised from the open varnish shot above.

As you can see, a lot of the hearts made it to the tip of my nails. It took extra going-over with the brush to get the hearts anywhere convenient; often they’d get brushed along until they were practically dangling off of the tip.

However, I was able to get at least one heart on each nail, even if I did have to dip my brush in and out of the bottle a few times before I applied a fresh coat.

(A rare “claw” shot so my thumb could get into the act.)

The good news, however, is that with a clear top coat added on, this dried relatively smooth, and pretty quickly. The bad news is that this was a pain to remove. Almost literally, as my nails are now getting really thin again (I have no idea why that’s so), and so having the cotton with remover pulling on the edges of the confetti wasn’t all that fun. But a little elbow grease, and I was eventually able to get this off my nails.

So, when all is said and done, this was an interesting polish, but I don’t know that I’ll ever wear it again.

I’ll have another poll up in a few days’ time, but first I have to enter some new acquisitions into the database – I’m getting behind!

And here’s some good old Richard Dawson. He always struck me as a minor player, what with him always giving the lady contestants a kiss, but I do rather miss him. This is the most out of control that I’ve ever seen him on the air – and I think the only time I’ve seen him completely ignore the clock.

Happy October, everyone. And to my friends in the UK, “White Rabbits!” (Though I guess that should’ve probably gone on the top of my post. . . .)